Retailers use planning as a mode of driving their business. Two types of planning are, top-down and bottom-up planning. The top-down planning is generally done at reasonably high level in the product hierarchy, such as department (see FIG. 2,) based on many subjective assessments. For example, merchants will assess areas of business they plan to expand, market trends, changes in profitability among product lines and other subjective factors, as the develop a top-down plan. Merchants also develop a middle out or bottom-up plan. Development of these plans often focuses on the class level and works down to the item level or focuses on key items in an assortment.
Computer-implemented planning systems can require an unmanageable amount of user input to create and maintain a plan. Merchants can spend an unjustifiable amount of time making their plan agree with what has actually happened and then re-projecting the future sales, gross margins, inventories and other variables being planned.
An issue therefore arises on how to easily create an accurate plan and maintain it as a selling season progresses. In addressing this issue it is useful to track merchandise at the level where the business really takes place: by item and selling/stocking locations. It is further useful to take into account real world merchandising factors such as promotions, presentations that impact sale or stocking levels, markdowns, stockouts, actual performance against plan and other real world constraints, without overwhelming the planners. One long felt need is to integrate real world considerations with planning and other merchandise management functions. Another long felt need is for an integrated merchandise planning and management system that rolls plans up from the item/location level.